For something as advanced as the Ipad it astounds me that the Calendar feature of the OS is So limiting.
The Calendar as some people know - ONLYallows searches for up to a year PRIOR to the current date.
For this reason alone I still carry around my PALM based PDA which allows a massive historical calendar on which you can search backawrds as far as 1970.
The IPAD/IPHONE has such a powerful and fast search feature but it disappoints as it can only go back a year in the Calendar.
Has anyone found a workaround for this? Is there a Calendar app out there which allows longer searches but 'sadly of course that probably won't allow you to use Spotlight.
Is it really so hard for Apple to implement this?

I looked at several apps for this and, in the end, chose Pocket Informant HD.

I read that Pocket Informant was buggy but, in my (admittedly) limited experience, Iâ€™ve found no problems at all. It has a very nice user interface that's almost infinitely configurable - a complaint that many Forum members make about the iPadâ€™s native â€˜Calendarâ€™ app. So you can choose how tasks, events, projects, appointments are colour coded and there is a wide choice of notifications and alarms - so, for example, you can have different alarm sounds for different categories of notifications.

Pocket Informant â€˜sits on topâ€™ of the iPad's native â€˜Calendarâ€™ app and (optionally) imports all entries that it finds there. They can be colour coded so they can be distinguished from entries made in Pocket Informant itself.

This is important because many other iPad apps use the native â€˜Calendarâ€™ app as the default place to put events, invitations etc. So, for example, if you are invited to a meeting by email and you receive that invitation in the iPadâ€™s native â€˜Mailâ€™ app, that app can automatically (and quite cleverly) insert that invitation into the default calendar app. Without that integration between the native app and Pocket Informant, you'd have to enter those invitations all over again.

Pocket Informant has lots of â€˜hiddenâ€™ features too. One of the reviewers remarked that part of the â€˜funâ€™ of using Pocket Informant was discovering them!! The display is infinitely configurable - day, week, month, year at a time. Tasks, events, overdue tasks, projects, projects in progress etc etc all can be optionally displayed on the main calendar. Projects and tasks can have infinitely nested sub-tasks and projects - these can cleverly be integrated with GPS - so, say you needed to purchase some goods from the hardware store. Put that in a To-Do list and link it to the location of the hardware store using the iPadâ€™s native â€˜Mapsâ€™ app. Next time youâ€™re driving past the hardware store, up pops the notification (â€˜Remember to purchase some 2â€x4â€ timberâ€™).

Repeating events are very flexible too, with the â€˜customâ€™ mode being infinitely (I keep using that word!) configurable. So, meetings that occur on the last Thursday and first Monday of every other month - no problem.

It can sync with external calendars - Google for example - and back-up is cool, it creates a backup file that you can email to yourself for safe keeping. If you lose your iPad or all your data is corrupted, that backup can be imported back into Pocket Informant with a single click.

You can create multiple diaries within Pocket Informant - say â€˜Workâ€™, â€˜Familyâ€™, â€˜Golf Clubâ€™ etc and have their entries optionally displayed on the main screen or restricted to the display of the individual diary. So itâ€™s easy to check if thereâ€™s a clash between the golf tournament and your wife's birthday - and hide it if there is......

If you surf to the developerâ€™s web-site, you can download for free a very comprehensive User Manual that will show you in detail what Pocket Informant can do.

The developers are constantly updating the program - always a good sign in my view.

As I said at the beginning, perhaps I'm not a particularly demanding user, but Iâ€™ve had no stability problems at all. I should add the usual disclaimer that I have no contact or other relationship with the developers of Pocket Informant other than being a very satisfied customer.

Yes I have heard about the powers of Pocket Informant HD but when I spoke to the developers they told me that they cannot improve on the Backward search issue as it is a limitation of the IOS.
Have you found a way to search back more than a YEAR (a hidden feature perhaps?)
Thanks for the quick reply.

Entries that are in Pocket Informant itself - there is no limitation. I have events three or four years ago in Pocket Informant that I can search and find. No problem. But events that were in the native Calendar and can be 'seen' by Pocket Informant - you're right.

Useful Searches

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